About the Music

Nordic Spotlight promotes the music and music festivals of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands, provides Nordic travel advice and tips, and sells travel experiences and ticket packages to music festivals in the Nordic countries.

We share third-party content in the form of embedded music players (such as YouTube, SoundCloud and Bandcamp media players) for the sole purpose of promoting the content. We make no claim of ownership of the embedded media. If you are the owner of media embedded on this website you want it removed, please send us message via our contact page and let us know.

Sail by Summer (NO & DE) – “Facing Dullness”

Sail by Summer describes itself as “melancholic,” but its recent single “Facing Dullness” doesn’t immediately portray the Norwegian-Danish duo’s sorrow. Under stuttering synth splashes, pitter-patter drum work, and squelching guitar notes often blanketed in reverb and phaser, “Facing Dullness” sounds convivial on first impression, just as the heftily produced art of a long-running, mainstream radio synthpop duo might. The facade quickly fades, though, thanks to metonymous frontman William’s wistful singing and the minor-key chord melody on which keyboardist Jens Kristian builds the song.

As William sings, “The night is young and words are unspoken” to open “Facing Dullness,” Sail by Summer pulls off the mighty trick of convincing listeners that the song might just be a perfectly chipper, sky-bound synthpop tune. It only takes one more line to identify Sail by Summer’s self-described melancholy, though: “Let’s maintain peace/’til morning has broken,” sings William, implying that those unspoken words from a line earlier weren’t, as expected, the feelings that potential new lovers hold in for fear of rejection.

“It’s one big mess and your soul is your token,” he continues, using a small image to deftly portray incredibly massive stakes. Although some of the imagery he uses shortly thereafter might be more commonly found in optimistic songs—”out of the bloom/into the wild”—the narrative he establishes details a deflating relationship without outlining the specifics of the situation. Images he uses later—bankers, investors, faith—maintain the song’s focus on general situations instead of a particular moment, making sure that the lyric before the song’s cathartic outro begins scans as majestic rather than contrived: “I’m facing dullness/in the arms of war.”

Indeed, “Facing Dullness” sometimes paints love as a battlefield, an area that can be full of isolation, even when sunlit. Throughout the lyric video for “Facing Dullness,” viewers are treated to similarly bright but desolate settings: industrial parks, sparsely populated woods, etc. Just as with the song itself, the video masks its despondency with joy, a dichotomy that seems to be Sail by Summer’s cornerstone.

Tags:

Max Freedman is the Managing Editor of Nordic Spotlight. Now based in Philly after a lifetime of living in and around NYC, he spends his days searching for the next Björk and his nights searching for the next Björk. His byline can also be found in FACT, Vinyl Me Please, Bandcamp Daily, Paste, FLOOD, and more.